Council of Elrond

After a few weeks of organizing and remembering my cards stored in the depths of... my closets for 20 years, I am now thinking on how I will play this game. Never played it, because there was no one around to play in my Brazilian town back then.

I have a nearly 6 year old son, and I managed to get him to see all the LotR movies with me and my wife. So now he is into it.

He is too young to learn the rules - which I am still studying myself lol - so my main idea is to play solitaire, at first some MP goal games, and then some scenarios. My idea is to think of quests and stuff and make him play with me, as if we were one player, "against" the hazards, and so on. So it is like an RPG game.

Today I was thinking: has anyone thought of a rule variant in which MECCG could be played cooperatively? Something "à la" LotR LCG or Marvel Champions (I read briefly about those games, never saw them; so I might be wrong here). Maybe think of a higher MP goal for a number of turns (generic game), or design specific scenarios that are more challenging...?

Maybe some rules to have interesting player interaction, like being able to exchange hand cards when wizards are on the same site (perhaps with corruption checks), transfer players from one wizard's company to the other, exchange information or cards through palantír use... All of that coupled with scenarios or settings to make the game challenging and demand coordinated action. It could be fun, I guess, if something is thought to make new forms of interaction that go beyond solitaire possibilities. Has anyone thought of that - if so, could you let me know where I can find it in this forum or else - ?

I am still a beginner, but those are things that crossed my mind, there are many ways of playing MECCG and I guess there is space for a cooperative variant, since they seem to be on these days.

I think easiest way of such play could be with 2 companies in solitaire game, each player controlling one with shared hand playing to one agenda or quest theme. That way you could basically follow the regular rules in play and both could make their own decisions though you need to share resources and make compromises together so both can make moves that would satisfy both. Or possibly dividing the resources for 2 separate decks for each player having their own hand with halved pulls.

If you look at the many scenarios posted here, you can see the ways that people have thought up to simulate a hazard player for solo-play. I think that in general it wouldn't be that hard to adapt this simulation for a cooperative game. Essentially this is what LotR LCG does with its Encounter Deck mechanic, in which Sauron basically just plays the top X cards of the deck during any given turn.

There is at least one official cooperative MECCG scenario called Wards of the Rangers from the Long Expected Party scenario book. It is pretty different from your usual company setup though, using solo characters with hand size based on their mind. It also uses the sites from that scenario book. It basically turns MECCG into a cooperative defense game.

Another idea would be similar to the "Cold Arm of Angmar" scenario where the goal is to defeat Nazgul. You could add Khamul at Dol Guldur and the 2 players could race to defeat one of them.

Thanks for the replies guys!

Yes, that "Wards from the rangers" scenario is quite different!

I liked the Nazgûl idea thing. To think of a goal that cannot be attained by a single player, maybe in a time-(turn) limit, and get it going. That is a good idea.

Another thing that would deserve thought is something to modify the interactions between players, communication, or something like this. Otherwise, we would be really just playing the solitaire game in two, as tyhjaarpa suggested. Perhaps thinking on pre-made decks for each player? Limiting communication somehow? Divided tasks (in different places) that "unlock" further parts of the scenarios? Those are possibilities, I think... Probably one will need a carefully prepared scenario with decks, or might think of something Arda-like... Anyway, just thinking here.

Thinking about it and searching the web I found this, it is a cooperative scenario:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/132KIOe ... dTzOCf_zSw

I planned out some rules for a general (non-scenario) cooperative variant which worked decently well. The forums do not have a place to post it, and my request is still waiting https://councilofelrond.org/forum/viewt ... 129&t=4257, but I also haven't been able to playtest for higher than 2 players since COVID started. It does help if one of the players knows the game well, though, so maybe wouldn't be the right place for you to start. But maybe soon!

Theo, I'd be interested in that. Could you send it to me privately or post a link somewhere? I think co-op variants might be a good way to stimulate playing with real cards; as it is, we have some players with nice collections, but it might be much to ask other people to start playing "versus mode", more difficult to make balanced decks, and so on. And specially in my case, if one knows the rules well, that'll do it. Sort of like a dungeon/game master in role-playing games, guiding the whole thing whereas less experienced players can worry about other gameplay decisions ("who should I take where? Where should we go next? How will I handle this attack?").